‘The least that can be said for Blow Out is that it ceaselessly reaches out to involve us in its attempt to divine the difference between art and paranoia and reality. And one of its attractions is that, while it comes to no conclusions about where the boundaries between those qualities finally are drawn, it insists upon the importance of creating some maps. In the end, Blow Out is about a world in which such distinctions have collapsed (or been exploded), about what it means for the game to be rigged against common decency.’Al Clark & James Park (eds), The Film Year Book 1983 (New York: Grove, 1983), p. 90.